In the Family Guy theme song, Lois Griffin laments the increasing ubiquity of “violence in movies, and sex on TV.” Notwithstanding the comedic irony of that line in one of the raunchiest and most offensive adult cartoons, one somewhat obvious counterpoint to the traditionalist/conservative objection to sex and violence in mass media is that reasonable people agree that violence is a categorical bad, and sex is not.
Heated Rivalry, the new HBO TV series based on a supersmutty romance novel about two professional male hockey players entwined in a yearslong secret situationship, would make Seth MacFarlane blush. The intensity and the frequency of the show’s sex scenes absolutely turn upside down the common purist refrain that TV and movies with a ton of sex are either lazy or boring because the sex does nothing to advance the plot, character development, or overall aesthetic value. Heated Rivalry is sex, sex, sex, hockey, and sex. But it’s also a critically-acclaimed, heartbreaking romantic drama set against the backdrop of professional hockey (the world’s best sport). And in my opinion, it does a great and necessary job of recognizing the rampant homophobia in male sports culture, especially the NHL.
The show’s success reminds me of my research on the history of modern pornography, its legal and social status in the US, and its role, if any, in the sexual oppression of women. Explaining or even attempting to summarize the complexity of porn in American society is too complicated to do here; for brevity’s sake, I’ll make just two observations, each rooted in a critique of modern porn for its frequent inegalitarian themes, not its per se moral corruption.
The Changing Ethics of Sex on Camera
First, the obvious fact that Heated Rivalry is largely being consumed for the sexual arousal/gratification/entertainment of its audience is really important for those of us who think the porn industry is seriously problematic and in need of regulation. If media that once would have been considered unthinkable for mainstream television is now the most trending show in pop culture because of, and not in spite of, its explicit sex, then we can finally dismiss the idea that people who are unabashedly into sex are moral reprobate. Both Heated Rivalry and garden-variety porn portray all different kinds of explicit sexual acts. That certain body parts are not as constantly and overtly exposed in this show as they are in traditional porn is immaterial, if the show is doing or intending to do what porn does or intends to do (arouse its viewers). The important moral difference between the two is one of power and exploitation. Big-time actors are glamorous, protected, and socially powerful.1 They have wealth and influence. When viewers see the actors who portray Shane and Ilya getting millions of likes on wholesome TikTok clips, everyone draws a collective sigh of relief: these are people who perform sex (that it’s not strictly “real” sex is not important, in my opinion) for our entertainment, and who at the same time are serious, three-dimensional humans with beliefs and desires divorced from sex. They aren’t ashamed, nor should they be, and neither is anyone watching. It’s like watching those documentaries about the Beatles or Elvis in their prime, with thousands of young women dropping adoring comments for the pair on TikTok. But actors in porn are often exploited, socially outcast, and resigned to enjoy only minimal regulatory protection in their industry. Of course, the fact that actual sex is not occurring on the mainstream TV scenes makes it different from porn. For example, many actors who perform explicit sex scenes in Hollywood use prosthetic genitalia. But if Hollywood is trending towards more pornlike–that is, more explicit–portrayals of sex, then people can opt for a more ethical version of the sexual media they want to consume. And the normalization of that kind of consumption will hopefully encourage strides in eradicating exploitation in the traditional porn industry, the rationale being that if the expressed desire to consume sexually explicit material goes completely mainstream, then so too should safety and ethical regulations within that material’s industry. That’s the hope, anyway.
Feminist Porn?
Turning to the egalitarianism problems with a lot of porn’s content, the female skew of Heated Rivalry‘s positive reception provides a strong argument against the idea that traditional (heterosexual) porn is liberating and/or enjoyable for women. The phenomenon that straight women really like this show suggests women’s desire to see portrayals of sex that abandon a narrative centered around the sexual capture and subjugation of a female subject. In the 80s and 90s, after hard-core porn films like Deep Throat were saturating headlines and conversations, the pornography debate exploded within the feminist movement. On one side were feminist legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon and feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, who argued that the violence against and subordination of women depicted in a lot of pornography should not be protected under the guise of freedom of speech. In other words, porn that shows women enjoying being tied up or beaten or raped is not the abstract expression of an artistic “idea” but is instead a concrete practice of male hegemony and female oppression.
Liberal feminists disagreed. Regulating or banning porn depicting sexual violence or degradation against women, they argued, undermines and erases individual women’s sexuality and freedom of choice because it denies the possibility that some women might themselves enjoy that kind of pornography. Whether or not this argument is correct (I don’t think it is), the reality is that women don’t report watching that much porn.2 But apparently women made up 47% of the viewership for gay male porn on the world’s busiest repository of Internet porn. And the clear love for the show from straight women seems to me like it could reflect a desire to see and experience sex without the inherent inequality of a lot of mainstream heterosexual porn. Ilya and Shane are each strong, confident, capable men; their own selves; if, in the course of their sexual encounters, they occupy various unequal positions of power, taking turns in domination and submission, they do so of their own volition and desires (each of whose are equal to the other). Nowhere from the sex scenes of Heated Rivalry can a viewer draw the conclusion that a participant in sex enjoys being dominated, degraded, or humiliated exactly because the participant is a woman; there is no woman.3 If Heated Rivalry tells us sexual submission can be male, then female sexuality need not premise itself on submissiveness.
The popular explosion of Heated Rivalry is part of a larger democratization of sexuality, which includes, but is of course not limited to, modern pornography. But the democratization of any social practice is not worth much if it does not eschew its past reliance on forced hierarchies. I think antipornography feminism is correct that the largely unregulated American porn industry has upheld and contributed to a forced hierarchy of male supremacy. But I also think that shows like Heated Rivalry can do a lot to destabilize what remains of the hierarchy, whether by uncovering wisdom about how women like to experience sexuality, televising a more diverse sexual practices (thereby normalizing them), or using sex as a genuine vehicle for fictional character development.
- Here’s SAG-AFTRA’s guide to protecting the safety and rights of members during intimate scenes. ↩︎
- In a 2016 survey, 11% of American adult women reported having intentionally viewed porn in the last month (compared to 33% of men). Mark Regnerus, David Gordon & Joseph Price, Documenting Pornography Use in America: A Comparative Analysis of Methodological Approaches, 53 J. Sex Rsch. 873, 878 (2016). ↩︎
- For the interested reader, below are helpful sources on the philosophy of pornography and feminist arguments for/against it:
1. Catharine A. MacKinnon, Only Words (1993) (arguing that pornography does harm in the real world; thus, it shouldn’t be treated as mere speech).
2. Andrea Dworkin & Catharine A. MacKinnon, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality (1988) (discussing how US legal system essentially ignores the harm of pornography to women).
3. Nadine Strossen, Defending Pornography (1995) (making the liberal feminists’ case against pornography suppression, arguing that increased access to pornography can be liberating for women’s sexuality).
4. Michael C. Rea, What Is Pornography? (2001) (identifying and criticizing six commonly accepted definitions of “pornography,” arguing that they are each insufficient, and suggesting a revised definition). ↩︎
*All opinions are my own and not reflective of any school or club association*
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